‘Friends—for all are friends here, and there are no strangers—once before, in the face of all of you I have told my love for my lord. My lord did not know that what I said was true, and I have not told him that it was true till I tell him here to-day. But you talk foolishly when you greet me as my lord’s bride; for in his country he is a great man and owns great wealth, and Neopalia is very small and poor, and I seem but a poor girl to him, though you call me your Lady.’
Here she paused an instant; then she went on, her voice sinking a little lower and growing almost dreamy, as if she let herself drift idly on the waves of fancy.
‘Is it strange to speak to you—to you, my brothers and sisters of our island? I do not know; I love to speak to you all; for, poor as I am and as our island is, I think sometimes that had my lord come here a free man he would have loved me. But his heart was not his own, and the lady he loves waits for him at home, and he will go to her. So wish me joy no more on what cannot be.’ And then, very suddenly, before I or any of them could move or speak, she withdrew inside the threshold, and Kortes’s sister swiftly closed the door. I was on my feet as it shut, and I stood facing it, my back to the islanders.
Among them at first there was an amazed silence, but soon voices began to be heard. I turned round and met their gaze. The strong yoke of Mouraki was off them; their fear had gone, and with it their meekness. They were again in the fierce impetuous mood of St Tryphon’s day: they were exasperated at their disappointment, enraged to find the plan which left Phroso to them and relieved them of the threatened advent of a Government nominee brought to nothing.
‘They’ll take her away,’ said one.
‘They’ll send us a rascally Turk,’ cried another.
‘He shall hear the death-chant then,’ menaced a third.
Then their anger, seeking an outlet, turned on me. I do not know that I had the right to consider myself an entirely innocent victim.
‘He has won her love by fraud,’ muttered one to another, with evil-disposed glances and ominous frowns.
I thought they were going to handle me roughly, and I felt for the revolver which the captain had been kind enough to restore to me. But a new turn was given to their thoughts by a tall fellow, with long hair and flashing eyes, who leapt out from the middle of the throng, crying loudly: